An extraordinary meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG), which was scheduled to be held on February 19, fell through due to the position of Ukraine. This was stated by the representative of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) in the tripartite contact group Rodion Miroshnik.
“We asked the Ukrainian side, if it insists on holding an extraordinary meeting, to provide a draft document that should end our meeting. After that, the Ukrainian side refused to hold a meeting. When we sit down at the negotiating table, we have a draft document that we want to amend by making corrections on both sides, and accept so that the meeting would have a real result. We see no point in holding another PR event, ”he told Izvestia.
According to Miroshnik, the next scheduled meeting of the TCG is scheduled for March 2 or 3.
An extraordinary meeting of the TCG was previously scheduled to be held on February 18, but the meeting was also canceled. As Mikko Kinnunen, special representative of the head of the OSCE to the group, emphasized, the security situation in the Donbass and along the line of contact is very alarming.
Earlier on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the lack of progress in resolving the Ukrainian conflict was due to Kiev’s unwillingness to implement the Minsk agreements.
On February 18, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) expressed concern about the significant deterioration in the situation in eastern Ukraine and called for a de-escalation in the region. The OSCE also indicated that the organization recorded 222 ceasefire violations per day in the DPR, including 135 explosions.
At the same time, Olga Kovitidi, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, told Izvestia that the UN and the OSCE should call on the Ukrainian authorities to comply with the Minsk Agreement. She stressed that the shelling is carried out from the artillery weapons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, prohibited by the Minsk agreements.
The situation on the line of contact in Donbass escalated on February 17. The LPR and DPR reported heavy shelling by Ukrainian security forces, including with heavy weapons. At the same time, Kiev announced the shelling of the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The republics announced a general mobilization.
On Friday, February 18, the heads of the LPR and DPR, Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin, announced that the authorities had begun evacuating residents of the republics to Russia in connection with the shelling.
Since 2014, the Kiev authorities have been conducting a military operation against the inhabitants of Donbass, who refused to recognize the results of the coup d’état and the new government in Ukraine. At the same time, Kiev blames Moscow for the current situation. Russia has repeatedly stated that it is not a party to the intra-Ukrainian conflict. The issues of its settlement are being discussed in the Minsk and Normandy formats.
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